


End Recording

by aye_of_newt



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Eye Trauma, M/M, Mild Gore, Tragedy, but he's willing to die for all of them, jon isn't sure he is one, saving the world isn't fun, what does it mean to be human?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:15:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aye_of_newt/pseuds/aye_of_newt
Summary: “Elias isn’t controlling the apocalypse,” Jon said quietly. He looked at Martin like he was already grieving, like he’d already given up. “I am.”Jon and Martin save the world.Only Martin lives to see it.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 54
Kudos: 118





	End Recording

**Author's Note:**

> So I binged all 189 episodes in like 2.5 weeks and now I'm torturing myself with the knowledge that it's going to end in ruin and pain and I though of this scenario that broke my heart so I'm sharing. 
> 
> I hope you... enjoy?
> 
> TW: some (mild) eye-related gore/blood

It should have been a sign when getting through London was so easy. Or when, despite the twisting, winding, impossible structure of the tower, they found their way to the top with surprisingly little effort. 

Or failing all that, it should have tipped them off that something was wrong when they captured Elias after a fight that was not early so long or difficult as they would have expected. 

They should have known better than to believe in good luck or a happy ending.

Still, as Jon tightened the bindings trapping Elias to his mockery of a throne and stepped back to admire his handiwork, holding out the pipe he’d used to battle Elias with as a warning to what would happen if he tried to move, Martin allowed himself a moment of hope that just maybe, just once, they would win. 

Despite how grim the situation looked for him, Elias did not appear to be bothered at all by his current predicament. He smiled at them, cloyingly knowing as a fresh trickle of blood crept down his temple. 

“What are you grinning about?” Martin demanded. “It’s over for you. Jon won. The Eye picked him. We're going to kill you and this whole thing is going to be over.”

Elias’s smile widened. “It’s just so ironic,” he laughed. 

“What is?” Jon demanded, halfway annoyed and half desperate, the creeping suspicion that something was wrong prickling at his spine. His hand shifted around the make-shift weapon unconsciously.

“Jon,” Martin warned. He grabbed Jon’s arm to steady him, or to hold him (and the pipe) back in case he decided to end things before they got their answers. 

Elias smiled. “It’s so ironic,” he continued, “That you,  _ Archivist _ , are trying to end this new world when you were the one who created it.”

Martin watched Jon and saw the guilt flicker in his eyes even as his jaw tightened in determination. 

“It’s ironic that you have come all this way to try and kill me, thinking that it will do something to end this, when it is all futile.” He laughed again, cold and cruel. 

“What?” Jon asked, and for the first time in,  _ god, Martin didn’t know how long, time didn’t mean anything anymore, _ Jon sounded lost. Unsure. His shoulders tightened.  He looked scared.

“What are you talking about?” Martin demanded on his behalf, anger clipping his words. Or at least he put on the facade of anger to cover the rotting feeling of unease that gathered under his skin. 

It was wrong to see Jon scared.

“It is so deliciously  _ ironic _ ,” Elias sneered, his deranged delight cracking through his face in a twisted grin. “That you have traveled all this way, through all those difficulties, all the horrors of this world, when what you needed to end it all was with you all along.”

“With me all along?” Jon asked, incredulously. 

“Yes, just like Dorthy. You’ve had the power inside you  _ all along, _ ” he sang. He looked at Jon with self-satisfied amusement. 

“Stop!” Martin shouted, sick of the confusion, the uncertainty, the fear. “Stop! Just stop. Explain what you are talking about⏤ no. Don’t. Why should we believe you?” He turned from Elias. “Jon? You would know if there was something else, wouldn’t you? You know everything. He’s just trying to save himself.There wasn’t any way to stop this out there. Was there?”

Jon’s brow was furrowed in confusion but his eyes were far away, as if seeing something, some far away piece of information that Martin could never understand. 

“Jon?” Martin asked. “Is he lying?”

“I… don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” Elias mocked.

“Oh, shut up,” Martin snapped, barely glancing at him before turning back to Jon. 

“There is something,” Jon said slowly. “I can feel it. I can almost see it, but it’s blurry somehow. It⏤ it doesn’t make  _ sense. _ ”

“You just don’t want to know it,” Elias said. “You’re afraid.” 

Jon’s look of concentration deepened until it looked almost painful. 

“You wanted to ignore it,” Elias taunted. “You wanted to keep playing hero, thinking of yourself as so important. As  _ good. _ As,” he smiled, sharp and mocking. “As human.” 

Martin’s grip on Jon’s arm tightened. 

“I’m not stupid. I know I’m not⏤” Jon started to say.

“But you want to be human,” Elias countered him, his voice still pitched in that infuriating even and calm tone, looking not at all ruffled to be tied up and at their mercy. “You cling to your humanity, thinking you can get it back again if you just try hard enough. But you are lying to yourself.”

“Why should we believe you?” Martin demanded again. 

“Ask Jon,” Elias smirked. 

Martin looked back at Jon and his stomach dropped at his expression. His eyes were still far away, but his lips had parted in startled realization as the confusion faded into bitter realization. The pipe slipped from his hand and rattled against the stone floor like a gunshot.

Elias cackled in delight. 

“Jon?” Martin asked and his voice cracked. 

Slowly, Jon turned to look at him. His hair, tangled and overgrown and streaked with more gray than Martin remembered it being at the Institute, hung limply across his sharp cheekbones. 

_And when did that happen?_ Martin wondered. _When did he start looking… older? And come to think of it, when did his cheekbones get quite so prominent? When did those bags of exhaustion form under his eyes? How had he changed when the world no longer allowed for change?_

Without thinking about it, Martin’s hand dropped lower to take Jon’s hand instead. He curled his fingers around Martin’s on reflex, grasping him like a lifeline.

“Martin.” He said it like a prayer, like a plea, like an apology. In that word, Martin  _ knew _ but he couldn’t allow it, couldn’t accept it. 

“Jon, what is happening?” Martin asked, in the small broken hope that he was wrong. But Martin knew Jon too well to be wrong. 

“Elias isn’t controlling the apocalypse,” Jon said quietly. He looked at Martin like he was already grieving, like he’d already given up. “I am.”

“But⏤”

“Martin,” Jon said in that tone of his, the one that was quiet but ached with weight. The one that told him the game was over and it was time to face what was happening. “Elias isn't the one who has to die."

And there it was, the thing that Martin had feared and thought about in the darkest moments when he was alone and the Lonely called to him, and he knew that in a moment Jon would ask him to do the one terrible thing Martin told himself he would never do. 

“There has to be another way,” Martin begged even though he knew that there wasn’t. He just wanted to delay hearing those words spoken aloud.

“Martin,” Jon said, turning his body fully away from Elias who couldn’t do anything to them more painful than what was already happening even if he somehow escaped. “I brought the apocalypse. I  _ am _ the apocalypse. In a way. I control all of this.” He looked around at the tower, twisting and pulsing around them. “I started this,” he said, his hand that wasn’t gripping Martin’s coming up to cradle his face, his own eyes damp as water began to blur Martin’s vision of him. “I have to finish it.”

“No,” Martin said, pulling his head away from Jon’s careful touch. “I won’t allow it.”

“Martin.”

“You can’t. You can’t leave me alone.”

“Martin, I⏤”

“You can’t! I love you,” Martin’s fingers dug so deeply into Jon’s palm that it had to hurt but he didn’t flinch. 

“I know,” Jon whispered. “I love you too. And that’s why I have to die.”

“I don’t care about the world,” Martin protested. “I care about you.”

“That’s not true,” Jon said quietly, tenderly. “About the world. I know you care. Ever since we ended up here, you’ve done nothing but  _ care _ . You kept me from becoming the monster that this place wants me to be because every day, or not day exactly because those don’t exist anymore, but every moment of existence, you make me better. You allowed me to pretend that I was still human. You made me feel more human, more alive, than I ever felt when I was just an ordinary, mortal man. You allowed me to cling to my memory of humanity. To my compassion. To my ability to love,” his voice cracked and Martin could see that he was crying. He was too weak to stop Jon from cupping his jaw again, bringing their foreheads together so that the world shrank to just the two of them.

Maybe the world was just the two of them. 

For all Martin could care, it was.

“I care about you more,” Martin protested. “The world can burn. I need you.”

“You don’t need me,” Jon said. “You want me.”

“I can’t⏤”

“You can,” Jon whispered. He tucked a strand of Martin’s hair behind his ear, his fingers trailing over it in the ghost of a touch. He looked at Martin like he was drinking him in, like he was trying to memorize every millimeter of his face. “You’ve always been so much braver than me.”

“Braver?” Martin asked. “What gave you that idea? That’s ridiculous.” 

“You never hesitated to march into danger. Confront the darkness and fill it with your light. That’s why I fell in love with you, you know.”

“What? Really?” For a split second, Martin forgot his fear and sadness as surprise colored his face. He pulled back to look at Jon better. 

“Really. Well, it captured my attention for sure.” Jon smiled. “After I saw how strong you were, I appreciated more how… soft you are. No. How  _ kind.  _ I realized that,” he searched for the right words. “I realized that you  _ choose _ to be gentle and good. It’s not all you are. It’s not always natural. It’s done deliberately, with intention.

“And most importantly, it’s not weakness. It’s strength. You could be cruel and hard and evil if you wanted to be, but you let those things go and you turn to the light and you fight for it while you make us all fight for it too. I love you because of who you are. And more than that I love you because of who you choose to be. Choose, Martin. Choose to be good. Choose to be the person that I love.”

“How can I be the person you love if you are dead and I am the one who killed you?”

“Because,” Jon said. “If you choose to keep me and let all of humanity suffer, you are not the person that I love. My Martin chooses what is right.”

Martin wrenched his hand from Jon. “Your Martin is a selfish prick who would do anything to protect the people that he cares about, consequences be damned.”

“Then,” Jon said. “At the very least, my Martin would do the thing that I asked him to. The thing that I needed more than anything else. The thing I want. The only thing that would save me.”

“Save you? You’re talking about dying!”

“If you don’t do this,” Jon said, his voice shaking. “I will eventually lose myself. You’ve seen it, Martin. I try to hold onto my humanity. I hold onto it for you. Because of you. And I would never hurt you, not even if I lost every other part of myself. I know that as surely as I can know anything.” Jon’s face saddened, his shoulders slumped as he spoke softly. “But I have hurt other people. Every person in existence who is hurting now is suffering because of me. This whole world is my fault. If you don’t end me, you will have to watch me fall. You will watch me become a monster, Martin. And in helping me, allowing me to do that, you will become one too.”

“I don’t care,” Martin protested again, but his argument had lost some of its power as Jon’s words, his request, sank in. 

“You do care,” Jon repeated. 

“No, I don’t, I⏤”

“Martin,” Jon said. “I know everything, remember? I know you care.”

“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to look in my head?”

“I’m sorry,” Jon said, but it was clear he wasn’t. 

“Can you even die?” Martin asked, his argument broken and weak and a last desperate attempt to escape the impossible task.

“He can,” Elias said.

The both startled, turning to look at him. They’d forgotten he was there. 

Elias smirked. “He can die, but you’re not going to do it.” He looked at Martin with calculating glee. 

“Shut up Elias,” Jon snapped. 

Elias rolled his eyes but stopped talking, apparently content to watch the tragedy unfold before him, entirely entertained.

Jon turned back to Martin. “The Eye,” he said.

“What?” 

“The Eye,” Jon repeated. “How do you destroy the Eye?”

“No,” Martin said, taking a step away from Jon. “I am not blinding you!”

“I can do that part,” Jon said. From his distance, Martin could see the way Jon’s hands shook even if his voice held steady. “I can do the eyes myself. It will weaken me. It will stop the Eye. But it won’t kill me. I need you to do that.”

“No.”

“Martin.”

“How do you even know you will die? You can’t die. You can’t be hurt here.”

“But I can. Remember Daisy?”

Martin felt sick as reality sank into his bones as he realized that Jon was right.

“If my connection to her was enough to allow her to hurt me, ours, well,” he trailed off. “Sufficient to say, you’re probably the only one who I’m connected to enough for you to kill me.”

“Jon,” Martin begged. 

“I need you, Martin. Please.”

Hot tears ran down his face and Martin shook his head silently, choked on his denial. 

“Martin,” Jon said again. He took one small step towards him. “This is what I want.”

“What about what I want?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask to be selfish.”

“Killing yourself to save the word, and you call yourself selfish,” Martin laughed, ragged and painful and full of love for the man who didn’t even realize how incredible he was. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Don’t. I’m the one being selfish, asking you to stay. Aren’t I?”

Jon’s face softened. “Martin⏤”

“But why can’t I be? Aren’t I supposed to ask for things I want? Aren’t I supposed to do what will make me happy? Isn’t it okay to be selfish sometimes?”

“It is,” Jon assured him gently. “And this time, I’m the one who has to ask you to do something you don’t want to do.”

“That’s a bit of an understatement.” 

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.” 

Jon stayed quiet, just watching Martin with that sad, resigned look.

Martin turned away, sniffing as he wiped at his red face. “I can have you, or the world can exist.”

“That’s about the size of it, yes,” Jon answered. 

“Fuck.”

Jon gave a small surprised laugh. “Yes. Well.  _ That’s  _ about the size of it.”

“I don’t want to,” Martin croaked. 

“I know,” Jon told him, all levity gone from his voice. 

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to kill you.” 

“I know.”

“If I don’t, there will be nothing in existence except for fear and suffering forever.”

“Yes.”

“If I do, I will never recover.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Then what I’m asking,” Jon said slowly. “Is even more selfish than I thought.”

“But you’re still asking.”

Martin and Jon looked at each other, both studying the other’s eyes and the thousands of emotions that ran through them. At the moment it was decided, there were no words spoken, just the bitter sharp pain of knowing what was to come. 

“Do you want to leave while I do it?” Jon asked. He controlled his expression well, but his voice trembled at the end, betraying his fear. 

“No,” Martin said firmly. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

“You don’t seriously think he’s going to do it, do you?” Elias said, his voice rising in barely concealed panic. “Martin is too weak, he could never⏤”

“Shut up,” Martin said, not taking his eyes off of Jon’s, savoring the last moments that he would have to look at them. 

“You’re bluffing! You would never-”

Jon turned to him.

“Jonah Magnus,” he said. “The Eye sees you. The Eye knows the torment and pain that you have inflicted upon the world.”

“Jon,” Elias shrieked, afraid for the first time. “Jon, stop.”

“May the fear that you have sown be turned back upon you, and feast upon you until you know the suffering that your existence was wrought and are destroyed by it.”

The scream that tore through Elias was made of the horrible wails of every life destroyed by his institute and that darkly satisfying cry of his own suffering. It made the hairs on the back of Martin’s neck stand up even as his mouth turned up in grim satisfaction to see him meet his deserved demise.

In the ringing silence after Elias was ended, Martin held his breath in the last vain hope that something would shift. That they would be wrong. That Elias was lying and he was the key to stopping the waking nightmare they endured. 

But nothing happened. 

In grim determination, Jon drew the knife from his belt, used a hundred times on their journey to cut through rope and undergrowth and the occasional monster. He flicked it open with a hand that barely shook. “Last chance to leave,” he warned, raising it. 

“Never,” Martin said. “I’m not letting you do this alone.” He came closer to illustrate his point. “At least sit down,” he asked, his voice as soft as he could make it, guiding Jon to his knees. 

Jon’s eyebrows, thick and dark, lay low and pinched with sadness and clear adoration and grief. They shadowed his eyes in deep hoods that would do nothing to protect them from the blade that glinted in the dim light of the tower. 

With fingers made clumsy by emotion, Martin carefully removed Jon's glasses, cracked and bent as they were. They were close enough together that Jon would be able to see him without them for what little time he had left to see.

Martin and Jon knelt facing each other, both of their eyes wide and desperate and hungry for every detail of the other to be absorbed and remembered. Jon looked at each part of Martin’s face in turn, imprinting the vision of Martin on his soul. He couldn’t think of anything else that he would choose as his last image. 

He raised the knife to his right eye. 

“Wait!” Martin cried. 

Jon paused, staring at Martin in a mixture of grief and hope that maybe he had a brilliant realization of a way out that somehow even the Eye didn’t know.

But of course he didn’t. Jon knew there was no other way. 

He Knew it.

“I need one more look,” Martin murmured. He placed his hands on either side of Jon’s face, cradling it in a grasp so gentle Jon could barely feel it. He traced his thumbs over his cheekbones and just under those brilliant, beautiful eyes, so filled with intelligence and determination and precious love for Martin. He studied the fine creases around them, the marks of thousands of hours of squinting at books and statements, from hundreds of exasperated though secretly affectionate frowns, from countless warm smiles given only for Martin. 

Martin was overwhelmed with love for him and he leaned in, capturing Jon’s lips in one last desperate kiss. 

Jon leaned into him and for the moment it was just them and the gravity of what they were facing into nothingness, an unimportant blip in the face of their love. 

Then it was over and Jon drew back again. Martin let his hands fall away from his face. 

“I love you,” Jon said. 

“Let me help you,” Martin asked.

“I can’t make you do that.”

“I’m going to be killing you,” Martin snapped. “Don’t try to protect me now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Martin said, his anger sapping from his body. It would be a waste to spend their last minutes yelling at Jon. “I’m not angry. Well, I am angry. But not at you. Not totally at you. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Marin slid closer so he could wrap his hand around Jon’s hand. And around the knife. He could feel a slight tremor run through Jon and Martin’s grip steadied it.

They guided it to his eye together. 

Jon made a valiant effort to stop his scream. 

Martin, in a voice that told of a heart broken beyond repair, told him to scream all he wanted.

The second eye was harder, the knife slick with blood. But Martin held it firm as Jon’s hands spasmed with pain behind his. The least he could do was get it over with quickly. He’d promised and there was no stopping now.

In the end, the red streaks that stained Jon’s face matched the tears that ran down Martin’s. 

Jon was whimpering with pain as Martin finally let go of his hand. It fell from his face like the knife weighed a hundred kilos and Jon’s arm was too weak to support it. The blade clattered loudly against the floor, breaking the terrible silence.

Martin looked at what he had done and swallowed his bile. 

“Martin?” Jon asked, sounding lost and scared. He stretched out his hand, glistening with wet red blood, searching for him. 

“I’m here,” Martin said softly. He took the hand and squeezed it tightly. 

“Thank you,” Jon rasped. 

“I’m not leaving you.”

“I know.”

“I need a minute,” Martin stuttered. “Before I⏤” He couldn’t say it. 

“I know. I do too.”

Screw  _ a minute. _ Martin thought that he would never be ready. How could he ever be ready to kill the person who meant more to him than his own life? But he looked at Jon, clinging to him, gritting his teeth in pain, and knew he would do anything for him. Even when it would tear Martin’s soul in two. He held tight to Jon too, grasping desperately onto the last moments he had with him as they ran like water through his fingers.

There was a long and suffering silence before Jon asked, “Martin?”

“Yes, Jon?”

“Would you… hold me?”

Martin didn’t respond, but he pulled gently on Jon’s hand, guiding him to his chest. He folded himself around Jon and buried his nose in his hair, closing his eyes as he let himself imagine for just a moment that it wasn’t the end even as he felt Jon shudder against him and his shirt grow damp as the thick scent of blood laced the air. 

Martin wasn’t sure how long they stayed there, he would have stayed there forever if he could, but Jon broke the silence far too soon. 

“I’m ready,” he said into the crook of Martin’s neck. 

Martin squeezed his eyes shut tightly, holding on to Jon with every fiber of his being for just one last second. He wanted to say that  _ he  _ wasn’t ready, but it wasn’t about him. It was about Jon. 

It was about the world. 

Sometimes, Martin really wished his heart was just a little harder than it was. But then again, if it was, Jon might not have loved him. And as selfish as it made him feel, Martin would not have given up being loved by Jon for anything, even if the time he got with him was far too short and Martin would have much rathered it be him who gave his life.

Jon pulled away and Martin let him, though he never fully let him out of contact, keeping some part of himself touching Jon at every moment so that he didn’t feel alone. Even if he had to be so scared as his death approached, Martin wasn’t going to let him feel alone. Alone was so much worse than scared. 

Martin picked up the knife, the handle wet and sticky under his red-stained fingers. He cradled the back of Jon’s head, looking into the ruin of his face and still saw his beauty. “I love you,” he whispered. 

“Martin,” Jon said. 

“What?”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t. Please. Don’t. I can’t handle that.”

“Okay,” Jon agreed easily. “Then I’ll just say I love you.” He tried to smile and it looked broken and wrong but Martin’s heart still reached out of his chest as the sight of it.

“I love you too,” Martin repeated. It had to be the last thing he said. He wouldn’t allow anything else. “I love you with everything I have. I love you with every breath in my body. I love you with each of my cells. I love you to the end of the Earth and beyond the end of days. You are my light. You are my soul. You are my reason. There are no words known by humanity that are good enough to describe how I feel about you, Jon, so I will say the best ones that I know. I love you.”

Jon scrambled for Martin’s hand and Martin offered it easily. He held Jon’s hand as tightly as he could in his left, clinging to it with every bit of strength he could, willing the love he felt to travel through the skin itself. 

With his right hand, Martin plunged the knife into Jon’s heart. 

It took a long time for Martin to register the sun that streamed through the window, or the sound of birds and real human voices, confused and lost but so incredibly  _ relieved  _ and free of pain that rose from outside. He didn’t see the way the tower shifted and settled around him until it became a normal, though badly damaged, building, free of grotesquely twisting architecture and impossible shadows. He didn’t watch as life returned and the monsters melted into nothingness. He didn’t see their victory as it flared to blessed reality.

He just held Jon, what was left of him, and carded his fingers through the tangled, blood-matted hair. 

When he finally managed to lift his eyes away from the sunken pits where Jon’s once were, he saw it, the blasted, evil thing that started it all with one tiny click. That stupid little object that he hated and loved with equal measure as he couldn’t help but look at it and see Jon. 

The recorder sat innocently on the ground, the tape spinning slowly as it cataloged the silence. There was nothing more to say to it. Nothing more to report. It was over and as far as Martin was concerned there would never be a need for it again. 

Still, it was recording. 

Like it was waiting for something. 

The end, maybe.

Slowly, Martin removed his right hand from Jon’s hair, (the hand soaked in red, the hand that blinded Jon, the hand that  _ killed _ Jon) and he pulled the recorder closer to himself. 

He spoke in a voice that cracked with dehydration and exhaustion and immeasurable grief. “We did it,” he said with an empty laugh. “We saved the whole goddamn planet.” Martin looked down at Jon’s limp form still draped across his lap. He whispered, “All I had to do was give up my world.” His finger hovered over the stop button. 

“End recording.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!   
> I am sorry for this. 
> 
> Please let me know what you thought! I am new to the fandom so I would really really appreciate thoughts and feedback!!!!
> 
> Love,  
> [Aye of Newt ](https://aye-of-newt.tumblr.com/)


End file.
